Amazon Scraps Plans to Build Fulfillment Center in Czech City of Brno

U.S. online retailer Amazon Inc. has scrapped plans to open one of its new European distribution centers in the second largest Czech city of Brno, and is looking for a new location to meet its goal of building five centers in the region through 2015, the company’s director of European operations said Wednesday.

“We respect the decision taken by the City Council and have suspended the current project in Brno,” Tim Collins said, referring to a recent decision by the city’s council to withdraw its building permit for the planned large-sized warehouse to be located near the city’s international airport.

Disagreements between the city of Brno officials and Amazon centered on delays over issuing permits to construct an off-ramp between the planned warehouse and a nearby expressway. Also some officials opposed re-zoning for commercial use the land on which Amazon had planned to build its logistics facility.